by Derek Kotz
Industrial reporter

UNIONS have welcomed moves to ban the “bandit capitalists” at the helm of Carillion on the third anniversary of the outsourcing giant’s collapse.

The company’s failure in 2018 with £7 billion in liabilities cost the taxpayer an estimated £150 million and more than 3,000 jobs, jeopardising hundreds of public-sector projects across the country.

A legal move to bar eight former Carillion directors was launched on Tuesday through the Insolvency Service by Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, and could see them barred from directorships or senior management posts for between two and 15 years.

RMT called for lifetime bans for the eight, who include former chairman Philip Green — once a government adviser on corporate responsibility -— and former chief executive Richard Howson.

Unite’s assistant general secretary Gail Cartmail said that the move should have come earlier and that the eight should be facing charges in court.

“If executives and directors had reported honestly on Carillion’s financial predicament, many of those job losses could have been avoided,” Ms Cartmail said.

She added that Mr Kwarteng should “cast his net wider to clean up the culture of ‘bandit capitalism’ across the UK corporate environment with a strong system of regulation and enforcement.”

RMT general secretary Mick Cash said: “The Carillion collapse should have been the final nail in the coffin for the sleaze-and-greed merchants who inhabit the UK outsourcing industry, and RMT is calling on the business secretary … to ban the spivs at the heart of this scandal for life.”

He said the Carillion empire was built “on a tissue of lies and deceit,” and the sort of gross corporate negligence at the heart of the collapse should be a criminal offence “and if that means a change to the law then so be it.

“There should also be a national ban on outsourcing in the public sector, as we have seen from Carillion to the school meals hampers that none of these chancers should be allowed within a million miles of our public services.”

GMB national secretary Rehana Azam said: “This issue is at the heart of what’s wrong with outsourced services. When things go wrong nobody takes responsibility.   

“It’s a disgrace and a dire legacy of this government that three years on from the collapse of Carillion they are only now moving to make senior people take responsibility.”